Last week, a concerned and very well-intentioned student wrote about his concern over the school paper’s name change from The Crusader to The Pulse. I have to disagree and say that the name change is one of the best things that could have happened to this campus.

The student writes, “I understood The Crusader because we are a Christian university; we should stand up to anything we disagree with.” Yes, we do need to stand up against things that are contrary to the will of God. The slaughter of thousands upon thousands of people over the course of a couple hundred years (read: The Crusades) is contrary to the will of God. To about one-sixth of the people in the world, the Crusades are a source of deep mistrust of anything Western or Christian. How can we reasonably think we are able to legitimately spread the Good News to Muslims if we are touting a newspaper entitled The Crusader?

Now I do not know what spurred the change that has led to The Pulse, but I do not think that it is–or should be–an issue of conformity to the world around us. It is about trying to rid the Church of a terrible reputation (that has been well earned, at times) so that we can be effective as the Body of Christ.

Again, I could tell that the student who wrote to the editor last week was very well-intentioned, and did bring about some legitimate points. However, I believe that it came from a very false, widely-held presupposition that “crusader” is synonymous with “christian”. We should be doing everything in our power to try to disassociate the Gospel from the sinful (attempted) conquest of the Holy Land. I thank God that he is a God who did not ordain the Crusades, and that he is a God who, well, gives me a pulse.

Thanks,

Dustyn Coontz